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Misogyny and Rape Culture on Campus

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  • hadokenhadoken Registered User regular
    ,
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote:
    You don't have to defend misogyny to think that "rape culture" is a terrible inflammatory term. It just is. It's obvious if you look at it from the perspective of anyone who's not already convinced on this issue.
    I started off thinking that rape culture wasn't a real thing and that the term was needlessly antagonistic. But I changed my mind, despite people continuing to refer to rape culture as rape culture. What does that say about your theory?

    That people acquire and process information in different ways? I decided to buy a PS3 despite Sony having an annoying ad campaign. That doesn't mean they should produce more annoying ad campaigns, or that we shouldn't try to stamp out annoying ad campaigns where we find them.

    If you're secure on your position on rape in culture, you shouldn't need to use language that associates ordinary people with rapists. You should be able to find a way to express those ideas that isn't an inflammatory soundbite designed to demonize those who disagree.

    YES! This is absolutely true, and it applies for any number of issues, all the time. No need to treat the opposition with contempt, it is counter productive!

  • KanaKana Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    "Socialist administration" is inflammatory, but "misogynist culture" isn't?

    "Socialist" is comparable to "rape?"

    What the hell?

    If you ever watch fox news, you'll know they're not at all comparable

    'Socialist' is much worse

    A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
  • KistraKistra Registered User regular
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Kistra wrote: »
    Rape culture isn't something that only people that disagree with it participate in. I participate in rape culture all the time. When I notice it or have someone point it out to me I generally try to change the way I act, but it is absolutely not something that only people that disagree with the term participate in.

    The song was about rape. It was about a misogynistic type of rape, but it was still about rape.

    EDIT: To be perfectly clear, I do not consider myself nor anyone else that participates in rape culture to automatically be violent criminals or in any way akin to a rapist. It is just something I work on like eating more fresh foods or not procrastinating written assignments until the last night.

    Sure, but can you see how that sort of inflammatory language would turn away someone who wasn't already aware of the issue of cultural misogyny? I sometimes have to monitor my behavior when I play online games, being careful not to get too caught up in the heat of the moment and say something hurtful. However, when I hear a Jack Thompson call my game a murder simulator I recoil. There might be real issues with the portrayal of violence in games and how it affects people, but it's hard to argue about them when the people on the other side use such dishonest and polarizing terminology.

    Again, it's not that the terminology is inaccurate ("murder simulator" is technically an accurate way of describing most shooters), it's that it turns away the very people who's minds you're trying to change. The casual misogynists and frat boys who'd sing a song about rape but never do it. This kid isn't going to remember this as the time when he was taught an important lesson about cultural misogyny, he's going to remember it as the time when some radical man-hating feminist called him a rapist because he sang a song on a bus.

    You don't have to defend misogyny to think that "rape culture" is a terrible inflammatory term. It just is. It's obvious if you look at it from the perspective of anyone who's not already convinced on this issue.
    Eh. The first time you explain the actual definition it should no longer be inflammatory. People keep assuming that rape culture implies all sorts of terrible things that have nothing to do with the word rape or the word culture.

    Using a different term that means and implies something completely different doesn't seem like a good solution to the problem of some people finding rape culture to be inflammatory. The only suggestion people have made in this thread is misogynistic culture which clearly means something very different. Do you have a suggestion for a succinct phrase to capture the idea that a significant subset of people (everybody?) do things or say things or don't say things that contribute to a cultural perception of rape as something that can be deserved or appropriate or not criminal or not forced or something that everyone does?

    Animal Crossing: City Folk Lissa in Filmore 3179-9580-0076
  • spacekungfumanspacekungfuman Poor and minority-filled Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    Lh96QHG.png
  • hadokenhadoken Registered User regular
    Kistra wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Kistra wrote: »
    Rape culture isn't something that only people that disagree with it participate in. I participate in rape culture all the time. When I notice it or have someone point it out to me I generally try to change the way I act, but it is absolutely not something that only people that disagree with the term participate in.

    The song was about rape. It was about a misogynistic type of rape, but it was still about rape.

    EDIT: To be perfectly clear, I do not consider myself nor anyone else that participates in rape culture to automatically be violent criminals or in any way akin to a rapist. It is just something I work on like eating more fresh foods or not procrastinating written assignments until the last night.

    Sure, but can you see how that sort of inflammatory language would turn away someone who wasn't already aware of the issue of cultural misogyny? I sometimes have to monitor my behavior when I play online games, being careful not to get too caught up in the heat of the moment and say something hurtful. However, when I hear a Jack Thompson call my game a murder simulator I recoil. There might be real issues with the portrayal of violence in games and how it affects people, but it's hard to argue about them when the people on the other side use such dishonest and polarizing terminology.

    Again, it's not that the terminology is inaccurate ("murder simulator" is technically an accurate way of describing most shooters), it's that it turns away the very people who's minds you're trying to change. The casual misogynists and frat boys who'd sing a song about rape but never do it. This kid isn't going to remember this as the time when he was taught an important lesson about cultural misogyny, he's going to remember it as the time when some radical man-hating feminist called him a rapist because he sang a song on a bus.

    You don't have to defend misogyny to think that "rape culture" is a terrible inflammatory term. It just is. It's obvious if you look at it from the perspective of anyone who's not already convinced on this issue.
    Eh. The first time you explain the actual definition it should no longer be inflammatory. People keep assuming that rape culture implies all sorts of terrible things that have nothing to do with the word rape or the word culture.

    Using a different term that means and implies something completely different doesn't seem like a good solution to the problem of some people finding rape culture to be inflammatory. The only suggestion people have made in this thread is misogynistic culture which clearly means something very different. Do you have a suggestion for a succinct phrase to capture the idea that a significant subset of people (everybody?) do things or say things or don't say things that contribute to a cultural perception of rape as something that can be deserved or appropriate or not criminal or not forced or something that everyone does?

    Probably say that bolded bit, seems pretty concise to me.

  • Grid SystemGrid System Registered User regular
    Squidget0 wrote:
    Squidget0 wrote:
    You don't have to defend misogyny to think that "rape culture" is a terrible inflammatory term. It just is. It's obvious if you look at it from the perspective of anyone who's not already convinced on this issue.
    I started off thinking that rape culture wasn't a real thing and that the term was needlessly antagonistic. But I changed my mind, despite people continuing to refer to rape culture as rape culture. What does that say about your theory?

    That people acquire and process information in different ways? I decided to buy a PS3 despite Sony having an annoying ad campaign. That doesn't mean they should produce more annoying ad campaigns, or that we shouldn't try to stamp out annoying ad campaigns where we find them.

    If you're secure on your position on rape in culture, you shouldn't need to use language that associates ordinary people with rapists. You should be able to find a way to express those ideas that isn't an inflammatory soundbite designed to demonize those who disagree.

    I can't stop you from imputing the motive of "demoniz[ing] those who disagree" to me. However, as Kistra noted and I supported, we are all implicated to a greater or lesser degree in rape culture. Agreement really doesn't come into play. And I suspect that any discussion of the elements of my dominant culture that make life a little too easy for rapists and a little too hard for survivors will be greeted with hostility, regardless of any attempts to sanitize the language. If people can't approach the phrase "rape culture" without flying off the handle, then I'm not sure they can handle the content of the argument. Getting caught up in the phraseology is indicative of a fundamental sort of irrationality regarding the subject matter.

  • UltimanecatUltimanecat Registered User regular
    I think it's okay to use inflammatory rhetoric in the context of open debate. If people are going to come to the table to explicitly exchange ideas, they need to do so without letting their delicate sensibilities get in the way. The thing about "rape culture" as a concept is that it tries to draw attention to all the hidden and subtle ways that a given culture is problematic when it comes to its treatment of rape. Your suggestion that because people who argue that rape culture is a real thing urge others to watch their words in some contexts, they themselves must watch their words in a different context, isn't terribly compelling.

    And why not? Who decides which contexts are appropriate to watch your words, and which are not? We already have rules about some of this stuff, of course, but they're there to prevent accidental offense, not to prevent a pervasive dissemination of unspoken ideals.

    I have no sensibilities. I am pretty much near unflappable, so I'm not offended by frank discussions of these things. At the same time, remarking how there seems to be a curious choice of language at work is not about me being offended - when I first heard some accuse someone else of promoting "rape culture" my automatic response wasn't "How offensive!", it was "What the Christ, at what point did someone advocate a culture of rape?". Not a culture where the act of rape is criminal but robbed of its criminality insidiously, not a culture where we'd rather look the other way, or make it hard on the accuser - no, a culture of rape is a culture that holds rape as an ideal or a value to be aspired to. When I think of a culture of rape, I think of US prisons.

    If the point is that we must own the language we use, even beyond its intention, then why purposefully choose terminology that both does not quite mean what it purports to, and has the side effect of making others not want to talk reasonably with you?

    SteamID : same as my PA forum name
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Sure, but can you see how that sort of inflammatory language would turn away someone who wasn't already aware of the issue of cultural misogyny?

    Yep. However, there isn't a more accurate or less inflammatory term for it.

    See, I've been reading your comments trying to figure out if you have a problem with the "rape" half or the "culture" half of "rape culture." Since "culture" isn't an inflammatory word, I have to presume that it's "rape."

    The chant in the OP is describing rape. it's not just describing misogyny, the lyrics explicitly wish that women were unable to fight back against unwanted intercourse. What it describes is exactly, completely, unequivocably rape.

    The concept of rape culture is that there are aspects of culture that facilitate or trivialize thanks, Arch! rape. Not kinda-sorta-metaphorical rape, but actual rape. That there are more women who are being forced against their will to have sex because the people doing it are particularly sensitive to cultural messages telling them that it's not that bad. That when women are forced against their will to have sex, they feel shamed and helpless because of cultural messages telling them that it wasn't that bad, or that they deserved it.

    What you are railing against is not inflammatory language. You are railing against the concept itself. You find the idea objectionable.

    Which is fine. You don't have to agree with me. Plenty of people disagree with me. But they actually come out and say it. 'I don't think that rape culture is a thing.' That's fine. You don't think it's a thing.

    But your premise that the term 'rape culture' is needlessly inflammatory rhetoric is a red herring. "Rape culture" is a precise, though short, descriptor for the concept we're talking about.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • spacekungfumanspacekungfuman Poor and minority-filled Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    I agree 100% that in an ideal world anyone could go anywhere without fear. My concern is that by shifting to focus to this unfairness, we risk putting more people into harms way while we work towards that ideal world. Just because things should be one way does not mean that the smart move is to just act like that is the world we are in. We need to balance avoiding victim blaming and discouraging ba and dangerous decisions.

  • KistraKistra Registered User regular
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.
    Sorry, but no. This is behavior policing. It normalizes that rape happens and victims can do things to prevent it. It normalizes people asking victims where they were and what they were wearing when they were raped. It also minimizes the experiences of women that were raped at home or when wearing sweatpants or when sober.

    If as few people were actually rapists as admit to being rapists, any woman should be able to stumble blind drunk down any alley in the US without fear of being raped.

    The problem is not ever the victim's behavior. Full stop. No ifs ands or buts.

    How many rape prevention sessions have you been forced to sit through? How many of them were about not drinking too much and not ever ending up alone with someone if you don't want to have sex with them and not showing too much skin if you were going to be drinking and making sure you had a buddy to check in with and being aware of doors and exits in case things got out of hand and practicing saying no emphatically? How many of them were about not having sex with someone unless they were enthusiastic about having sex with you? Because I have sat through hundreds of the first kind and none of the second kind. Admittedly, I have been out of college for a number of years and maybe (hopefully??) this has changed.

    Animal Crossing: City Folk Lissa in Filmore 3179-9580-0076
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    If the point is that we must own the language we use, even beyond its intention, then why purposefully choose terminology that both does not quite mean what it purports to, and has the side effect of making others not want to talk reasonably with you?

    I take ownership of the words I use, which means I try to plainly explain what I mean and clear up any illusions about my intent.

    It doesn't mean I stop using a particular set of words forever because some people misunderstood me.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    I agree 100% that in an ideal world anyone could go anywhere without fear. My concern is that by shifting to focus to this unfairness, we risk putting more people into harms way while we work towards that ideal world. Just because things should be one way does not mean that the smart move is to just act like that is the world we are in. We need to balance avoiding victim blaming and discouraging ba and dangerous decisions.

    You can encourage smart behavior without resorting to or defending "what was she expecting" thinking. It's important to teach people how they can defend themselves, but its more important not to give criminals an "out". We don't blame people when they get mugged. That's the part of the whole "rape culture" thing and it's something to be avoided.

    Lh96QHG.png
  • Squidget0Squidget0 Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Kistra wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Kistra wrote: »
    Rape culture isn't something that only people that disagree with it participate in. I participate in rape culture all the time. When I notice it or have someone point it out to me I generally try to change the way I act, but it is absolutely not something that only people that disagree with the term participate in.

    The song was about rape. It was about a misogynistic type of rape, but it was still about rape.

    EDIT: To be perfectly clear, I do not consider myself nor anyone else that participates in rape culture to automatically be violent criminals or in any way akin to a rapist. It is just something I work on like eating more fresh foods or not procrastinating written assignments until the last night.

    Sure, but can you see how that sort of inflammatory language would turn away someone who wasn't already aware of the issue of cultural misogyny? I sometimes have to monitor my behavior when I play online games, being careful not to get too caught up in the heat of the moment and say something hurtful. However, when I hear a Jack Thompson call my game a murder simulator I recoil. There might be real issues with the portrayal of violence in games and how it affects people, but it's hard to argue about them when the people on the other side use such dishonest and polarizing terminology.

    Again, it's not that the terminology is inaccurate ("murder simulator" is technically an accurate way of describing most shooters), it's that it turns away the very people who's minds you're trying to change. The casual misogynists and frat boys who'd sing a song about rape but never do it. This kid isn't going to remember this as the time when he was taught an important lesson about cultural misogyny, he's going to remember it as the time when some radical man-hating feminist called him a rapist because he sang a song on a bus.

    You don't have to defend misogyny to think that "rape culture" is a terrible inflammatory term. It just is. It's obvious if you look at it from the perspective of anyone who's not already convinced on this issue.
    Eh. The first time you explain the actual definition it should no longer be inflammatory. People keep assuming that rape culture implies all sorts of terrible things that have nothing to do with the word rape or the word culture.

    Using a different term that means and implies something completely different doesn't seem like a good solution to the problem of some people finding rape culture to be inflammatory. The only suggestion people have made in this thread is misogynistic culture which clearly means something very different. Do you have a suggestion for a succinct phrase to capture the idea that a significant subset of people (everybody?) do things or say things or don't say things that contribute to a cultural perception of rape as something that can be deserved or appropriate or not criminal or not forced or something that everyone does?

    "Misogynist culture" seems to me like the correct term to use here, because it accurately describes the culture of the college campus that allows this sort of thing to occur. Having a single term that encompasses misogyny, apathy towards criminals, and disbelief about male victims doesn't seem needed to me, because those are all different cultural viewpoints held by different people for vastly different reasons. There isn't any meaningful common thread for you to attack there, other than the crime itself. Pointing out that the culture of college campuses is misogynist gets to the heart of the issue in this case. If this were a thread about prison rape we could discuss the cultural norms of why that happens and how it comes to be accepted, but I don't see how that discussion is particularly related to this one.

    I think the student and students like him would probably be more receptive to changing his view if people were calling what he did misogynist rather than calling him a spokesman for rape culture. People are a lot more likely to change their behavior when they're not being compared to violent criminals and murderers. If someone called a pro-choice politician a "spokesman for an infanticide culture", would you bother to ask how they were defining infanticide culture, or would you simply dismiss what they were saying as emotional rabble-rousing?

    Squidget0 on
  • Grid SystemGrid System Registered User regular
    I think it's okay to use inflammatory rhetoric in the context of open debate. If people are going to come to the table to explicitly exchange ideas, they need to do so without letting their delicate sensibilities get in the way. The thing about "rape culture" as a concept is that it tries to draw attention to all the hidden and subtle ways that a given culture is problematic when it comes to its treatment of rape. Your suggestion that because people who argue that rape culture is a real thing urge others to watch their words in some contexts, they themselves must watch their words in a different context, isn't terribly compelling.

    And why not? Who decides which contexts are appropriate to watch your words, and which are not? We already have rules about some of this stuff, of course, but they're there to prevent accidental offense, not to prevent a pervasive dissemination of unspoken ideals.
    I suppose everyone makes that call for themselves, based on their value system.

    I have no sensibilities. I am pretty much near unflappable, so I'm not offended by frank discussions of these things. At the same time, remarking how there seems to be a curious choice of language at work is not about me being offended - when I first heard some accuse someone else of promoting "rape culture" my automatic response wasn't "How offensive!", it was "What the Christ, at what point did someone advocate a culture of rape?". Not a culture where the act of rape is criminal but robbed of its criminality insidiously, not a culture where we'd rather look the other way, or make it hard on the accuser - no, a culture of rape is a culture that holds rape as an ideal or a value to be aspired to. When I think of a culture of rape, I think of US prisons.

    If the point is that we must own the language we use, even beyond its intention, then why purposefully choose terminology that both does not quite mean what it purports to, and has the side effect of making others not want to talk reasonably with you?

    It's interesting that you chose the construction "culture of rape" rather than "rape culture". I assume that you did that because you agree that while "rape culture" admits the interpretation "culture of rape", it also admits other interpretations. If that is the case, then I am sure you would also agree that there is no phrase more succinct and attention-grabbing than "rape culture" to describe a culture with some aspects that make rape too easy to perpetrate without consequences.

  • HeisenbergHeisenberg Registered User regular
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    Ideally we would never have war, we could travel space, and no one would be poor. Unfortunately we live in the real world.

  • hadokenhadoken Registered User regular
    Kistra wrote: »
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.
    Sorry, but no. This is behavior policing. It normalizes that rape happens and victims can do things to prevent it. It normalizes people asking victims where they were and what they were wearing when they were raped. It also minimizes the experiences of women that were raped at home or when wearing sweatpants or when sober.

    If as few people were actually rapists as admit to being rapists, any woman should be able to stumble blind drunk down any alley in the US without fear of being raped.

    The problem is not ever the victim's behavior. Full stop. No ifs ands or buts.

    How many rape prevention sessions have you been forced to sit through? How many of them were about not drinking too much and not ever ending up alone with someone if you don't want to have sex with them and not showing too much skin if you were going to be drinking and making sure you had a buddy to check in with and being aware of doors and exits in case things got out of hand and practicing saying no emphatically? How many of them were about not having sex with someone unless they were enthusiastic about having sex with you? Because I have sat through hundreds of the first kind and none of the second kind. Admittedly, I have been out of college for a number of years and maybe (hopefully??) this has changed.

    Don't statistics indicate that what a victim was wearing had nothing to do with the event?

    Anyway, the victim of a crime is not ever at fault for the fact that the event happened. Obviously, the perpetrator is culpable. But this doesn't mean that the victim's actions had nothing to do with the event taking place. If I was told, "don't go walking through that neighbourhood, you will be assaulted", and I go there and assault occurs, then no, I didn't assault anyone and it isn't my fault that I was assaulted. However, I did go to a certain place where there was higher likelihood of assault happening, so to say that my actions have nothing to do with my experience seems rather unreasonable.

  • squeefishsqueefish Registered User regular
    Considering the vast majority of rapes do not occur in the context that spacekungfuman is describing (biker bars full of leering men ready to prey on women in short skirts), the endless "rape prevention sessions" that Kistra is describing do little more than contribute to the cultural perception of rape being a) the result of women's carelessness/sluttiness and b) the act of a leering boogeyman. If these sorts of sessions really wanted to teach women how to avoid getting raped, they'd skew more toward "don't interact with men, especially in the home," which is obviously silly and unhelpful.

  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    Ideally we would never have war, we could travel space, and no one would be poor. Unfortunately we live in the real world.

    Herein we see a post which has completely missed the point.

    You don't blame the victim, if you do, you're a dick. All "what did she expect" does is let rapists off the hook. People like Liz Trotta who trot that chestnut out make me sick and they're a cancer on our national discourse. Because a woman wore a short skirt does not mean that rapists can be absolved. The woman is never at fault when she gets raped. Full fucking stop.

    Lh96QHG.png
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    We need to balance avoiding victim blaming and discouraging bad and dangerous decisions.

    My best friend was raped by a cab driver who she called to take her home after drinking.

    "If you've been drinking, call a cab," is typically held to be good advice.

    My ex-girlfriend was raped by an ex-boyfriend who she'd been dating for a few months.

    "Don't spend time alone with your boyfriend" is not a typical safety tip.

    Here's the thing - the idea that you can reduce rape by "discouraging bad and dangerous decisions" is a load of crap. The majority of rapes aren't stranger rapes, they are acquaintance rapes, committed by people who the victim was in a position to reasonably trust.

    Women already know that they shouldn't be in dangerous situations. You know - without being told! - not to walk down dark alleys in the ghetto alone. I know it too, without being told. Why? Because we have common sense.

    Now, to presume that young women don't actually know this, that they don't actually know that situations can be dangerous, implies that they are either stupid or ridiculously sheltered. On an individual level, either of these things may be true - there are stupid and sheltered young women out there, as there are stupid and sheltered young men. But that's a thing to be assessed in a 1-on-1 conversation with a specific person. On a social level, it's a bit insulting to women as a group to insinuate that inability to identify dangerous situations is a primary driver of rape rates, and that if women were just a little more careful, they wouldn't get raped as much.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • HeisenbergHeisenberg Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    Ideally we would never have war, we could travel space, and no one would be poor. Unfortunately we live in the real world.

    Herein we see a post which has completely missed the point.

    You don't blame the victim, if you do, you're a dick. All "what did she expect" does is let rapists off the hook. People like Liz Trotta who trot that chestnut out make me sick and they're a cancer on our national discourse. Because a woman wore a short skirt does not mean that rapists can be absolved. The woman is never at fault when she gets raped. Full fucking stop.

    Of course it doesn't make rape acceptable, but it also doesn't make it acceptable to be intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive.

    Heisenberg on
  • KanaKana Registered User regular
    To expand a little bit on something I was writing earlier:

    I still think the biggest flaw with "rape culture" is that it treats society being apathetic/permissive of rape as somehow a completely different syndrome than society being permissive of murder, theft, violence in general, basically every other crime. The just world phenomenon is pretty damn prevalent in conservative politics these days, and it's effects pop up all over the ideological map. If poor communities want their neighborhoods to be less crappy then they should just stop joining gangs, the idiots. Poor people are only poor because they don't want to work as hard as we do. If a girl goes to a frat party and gets wasted she shouldn't be surprised she ended up having sex with someone. We shouldn't care about prisoners getting raped in prison because they already made their choices that got them there. People that choose to live in bad neighborhoods shouldn't be surprised when they get robbed. Unemployed people are just too lazy to go find a new job so we should cut them off of unemployment. Drug addicts shouldn't get government help to quit because it's their own damn fault they're addicts.

    I look at that and to me it's not "Rape Culture" and then "everything-else culture". It's all symptoms of the same worldview, the general belief that you deserve whatever happens to you. It's a very, very easy worldview to have if you're from (and I use this word under protest) a privileged background. Calling it a culture of rape, or a culture of misogyny makes it very very easy to begin the conversation by splitting everyone into the people that Get It (like the professor from OP) and then everyone else. And trying to educate people and get them to look at their own attitudes and assumptions is very, very difficult if the conversation starts out by telling them that they're tacitly approving of rape. Even if that's not really your message, it's awfully hard not to take it that way.

    The song in the OP is pretty tasteless, but so are dead baby jokes and pedophile jokes. I LOVE tasteless horribly offensive jokes. I'm perfectly willing to agree that in some cases, "rape culture" really is a useful term to use, -especially- in situations like colleges and sports teams and fraternities, where there can be some really bad shit going down. I just don't think it's useful as part of our discussion of culture at large, when the primary cause of societal apathy applies to so many different crimes.

    Also I still find it bizarre that that professor considers teaching with Titus Andronicus as a positive example. I mean from what I remember of the reduced Shakespeare company, doesn't it involve a whole lot of blood, guts, and feeding the rapist to his mother? It was sorta Shakespeare's torture porn phase. And besides, it wasn't very good.

    A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
  • poshnialloposhniallo Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    The very important difference here is that all humans should rationally avoid dangerous places, but you also think women should avoid dangerous places for women. When it's a subset of the population that you're talking about, and particularly a group which is discriminated against, then you're enabling the oppression.

    Imagine a Jewish person in a Polish ghetto - their parents might want them to stay away from anywhere anti-semites might be, and that's OK because they're part of the oppressed group trying to manage their problems. But an outsider who said, 'There are some things a Jewish person should not do, like walking into a coffee shop that contains Germans alone with a hat on' would be just one more attacker. Those words are almost exactly the same as yours, of course.

    This kind of thing is one aspect of rape culture - that our cultural values for responsibility and blame are so skewed that we can feel like we are trying to help but actually be part of the problem. One of the things that always helps me notice this is linguistics and the concept of a speech act - that when we speak we are acting, and we have a purpose. We can't just 'state the facts' - we are always pursuing a course of action, consciously or not. And in this case, the statement of what you think is a helpful fact has an unconscious effect that is particularly difficult for you to notice, due to the pervasiveness of 'rape culture'.

    Oh, and the people saying 'rape' is a loaded word - what does that even mean? How is it 'loaded'? It's emotive, because it's a terrible terrible thing. That isn't the same thing at all - or do you prefer we don't discuss terrible things, only nice things?

    poshniallo on
    I figure I could take a bear.
  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    Ideally we would never have war, we could travel space, and no one would be poor. Unfortunately we live in the real world.

    Herein we see a post which has completely missed the point.

    You don't blame the victim, if you do, you're a dick. All "what did she expect" does is let rapists off the hook. People like Liz Trotta who trot that chestnut out make me sick and they're a cancer on our national discourse. Because a woman wore a short skirt does not mean that rapists can be absolved. The woman is never at fault when she gets raped. Full fucking stop.

    Of course it doesn't make rape acceptable, but it also doesn't make it acceptable to be intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive. Were you born yesterday?

    I was, in fact, the rest of my post history is all through magic. Life begins at internet connection.

    What exactly am I being naive about? Please, explain to me how seeing victim blaming as offensive is naive. Honestly, I'm all ears. Well, eyes, it is the internet.

    Lh96QHG.png
  • KanaKana Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    Ideally we would never have war, we could travel space, and no one would be poor. Unfortunately we live in the real world.

    Herein we see a post which has completely missed the point.

    You don't blame the victim, if you do, you're a dick. All "what did she expect" does is let rapists off the hook. People like Liz Trotta who trot that chestnut out make me sick and they're a cancer on our national discourse. Because a woman wore a short skirt does not mean that rapists can be absolved. The woman is never at fault when she gets raped. Full fucking stop.

    Of course it doesn't make rape acceptable, but it also doesn't make it acceptable to be intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive.

    I feel like Heisenberg is performing some type of performance art to provide the perfect example of rape culture which he claims to be arguing against.

    Either that or he's being genuinely thick and mind numbingly naive.

    Kana on
    A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
  • hadokenhadoken Registered User regular
    poshniallo wrote: »
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    The very important difference here is that all humans should rationally avoid dangerous places, but you also think women should avoid dangerous places for women. When it's a subset of the population that you're talking about, and particularly a group which is discriminated against, then you're enabling the oppression.

    Imagine a Jewish person in a Polish ghetto - their parents might want them to stay away from anywhere anti-semites might be, and that's OK because they're part of the oppressed group trying to manage their problems. But an outsider who said, 'There are some things a Jewish person should not do, like walking into a coffee shop that contains Germans alone with a hat on' would be just one more attacker. Those words are almost exactly the same as yours, of course.

    This kind of thing is one aspect of rape culture - that our cultural values for responsibility and blame are so skewed that we can feel like we are trying to help but actually be part of the problem. One of the things that always helps me notice this is linguistics and the concept of a speech act - that when we speak we are acting, and we have a purpose. We can't just 'state the facts' - we are always pursuing a course of action, consciously or not. And in this case, the statement of what you think is a helpful fact has an unconscious effect that is particularly difficult for you to notice, due to the pervasiveness of 'rape culture'.

    Oh, and the people saying 'rape' is a loaded word - what does that even mean? How is it 'loaded'? It's emotive, because it's a terrible terrible thing. That isn't the same thing at all - or do you prefer we don't discuss terrible things, only nice things?

    Just that rape can mean a lot of different things to different people. Some don't consider rape by envelopment to be rape, the FBI for example http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/advisory-policy-board .

  • HeisenbergHeisenberg Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Kana wrote: »
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    Ideally we would never have war, we could travel space, and no one would be poor. Unfortunately we live in the real world.

    Herein we see a post which has completely missed the point.

    You don't blame the victim, if you do, you're a dick. All "what did she expect" does is let rapists off the hook. People like Liz Trotta who trot that chestnut out make me sick and they're a cancer on our national discourse. Because a woman wore a short skirt does not mean that rapists can be absolved. The woman is never at fault when she gets raped. Full fucking stop.

    Of course it doesn't make rape acceptable, but it also doesn't make it acceptable to be intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive.

    I feel like Heisenberg is performing some type of performance art to provide the perfect example of rape culture which he claims to be arguing against.

    Either that or he's being intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive.

    Why is finding rape horrible and having common sense mutually exclusive? People are bad and will do bad things given the opportunity. Don't give them the opportunity. Spacekungfu already said it: "walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem."

    Heisenberg on
  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Kana wrote: »
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    Ideally we would never have war, we could travel space, and no one would be poor. Unfortunately we live in the real world.

    Herein we see a post which has completely missed the point.

    You don't blame the victim, if you do, you're a dick. All "what did she expect" does is let rapists off the hook. People like Liz Trotta who trot that chestnut out make me sick and they're a cancer on our national discourse. Because a woman wore a short skirt does not mean that rapists can be absolved. The woman is never at fault when she gets raped. Full fucking stop.

    Of course it doesn't make rape acceptable, but it also doesn't make it acceptable to be intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive.

    I feel like Heisenberg is performing some type of performance art to provide the perfect example of rape culture which he claims to be arguing against.

    Either that or he's being intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive.

    Why is finding rape horrible and having common sense mutually exclusive? People are bad and will do bad things given the opportunity. Don't give them the opportunity. Spacekungfu already said it: "walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem."

    Yes, but you should be encouraging smart behavior on its own right.

    You don't do it by saying "What was she expecting". Don't blame the victim.

    Lh96QHG.png
  • _J__J_ Pedant Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    Feral wrote: »
    The majority of rapes aren't stranger rapes, they are acquaintance rapes, committed by people who the victim was in a position to reasonably trust.

    This.

  • KistraKistra Registered User regular
    hadoken wrote: »
    Kistra wrote: »
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.
    Sorry, but no. This is behavior policing. It normalizes that rape happens and victims can do things to prevent it. It normalizes people asking victims where they were and what they were wearing when they were raped. It also minimizes the experiences of women that were raped at home or when wearing sweatpants or when sober.

    If as few people were actually rapists as admit to being rapists, any woman should be able to stumble blind drunk down any alley in the US without fear of being raped.

    The problem is not ever the victim's behavior. Full stop. No ifs ands or buts.

    How many rape prevention sessions have you been forced to sit through? How many of them were about not drinking too much and not ever ending up alone with someone if you don't want to have sex with them and not showing too much skin if you were going to be drinking and making sure you had a buddy to check in with and being aware of doors and exits in case things got out of hand and practicing saying no emphatically? How many of them were about not having sex with someone unless they were enthusiastic about having sex with you? Because I have sat through hundreds of the first kind and none of the second kind. Admittedly, I have been out of college for a number of years and maybe (hopefully??) this has changed.

    Don't statistics indicate that what a victim was wearing had nothing to do with the event?

    Anyway, the victim of a crime is not ever at fault for the fact that the event happened. Obviously, the perpetrator is culpable. But this doesn't mean that the victim's actions had nothing to do with the event taking place. If I was told, "don't go walking through that neighbourhood, you will be assaulted", and I go there and assault occurs, then no, I didn't assault anyone and it isn't my fault that I was assaulted. However, I did go to a certain place where there was higher likelihood of assault happening, so to say that my actions have nothing to do with my experience seems rather unreasonable.
    ...and yet it was in spacekungfuman's example of common sense behavior. And it is still relevant in the minds of many people. This is a perfect example of how these kinds of statements make things worse despite trying to help.

    Animal Crossing: City Folk Lissa in Filmore 3179-9580-0076
  • Squidget0Squidget0 Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Sure, but can you see how that sort of inflammatory language would turn away someone who wasn't already aware of the issue of cultural misogyny?

    Yep. However, there isn't a more accurate or less inflammatory term for it.

    See, I've been reading your comments trying to figure out if you have a problem with the "rape" half or the "culture" half of "rape culture." Since "culture" isn't an inflammatory word, I have to presume that it's "rape."

    The chant in the OP is describing rape. it's not just describing misogyny, the lyrics explicitly wish that women were unable to fight back against unwanted intercourse. What it describes is exactly, completely, unequivocably rape.

    The concept of rape culture is that there are aspects of culture that facilitate or trivialize thanks, Arch! rape. Not kinda-sorta-metaphorical rape, but actual rape. That there are more women who are being forced against their will to have sex because the people doing it are particularly sensitive to cultural messages telling them that it's not that bad. That when women are forced against their will to have sex, they feel shamed and helpless because of cultural messages telling them that it wasn't that bad, or that they deserved it.

    What you are railing against is not inflammatory language. You are railing against the concept itself. You find the idea objectionable.

    Which is fine. You don't have to agree with me. Plenty of people disagree with me. But they actually come out and say it. 'I don't think that rape culture is a thing.' That's fine. You don't think it's a thing.

    But your premise that the term 'rape culture' is needlessly inflammatory rhetoric is a red herring. "Rape culture" is a precise, though short, descriptor for the concept we're talking about.

    I'm not sure we disagree on any particular points about the culture itself. I think that our culture is permissive towards misogyny and, in some situations, permissive towards rape. I think culturally we often view rape as something that happens to 'bad' people, and that some cultural norms in our society support this. I think we often react to rape of women by blaming them, react to rape of men by doubting them, and react to rape of criminals by ignoring them. This is the culture we live in. As near as I can tell, you and I don't disagree on any particular cultural point.

    I object to tying all of those things together into the phrase "rape culture" for the same reason I object to calling abortion 'infanticide', calling video games 'murder simulators', and calling reasonable discussions about how to allocate medical resources 'death panels.' In every case it's an inflammatory sound bite designed to silence people who disagree. I'm not even convinced that you need one phrase to tie all of those things together, because they're very different issues and I haven't ever seen anyone draw a common thread between them, beyond the fact that rape is involved. For example, I think the impulses that make us demand "justice" for criminals are probably different than the impulses that make people ignore male victims, and those cultural norms will be changed in different ways. Just high-end embezzlement on wall street is a different cultural issue than liquor-store robbery.

    The fact that so many people even in this thread have misunderstood the language you're using (and taken it to mean something far more inflammatory and extreme than it actually means) suggests to me that we should use a different term, if we must use one at all.

  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    No, you don't get rid of a term just because people have difficulty understanding it.

    Lh96QHG.png
  • _J__J_ Pedant Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    No, you don't get rid of a term just because people have difficulty understanding it.

    We do sometimes.

  • Squidget0Squidget0 Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    No, you don't get rid of a term just because people have difficulty understanding it.

    So I assume you're okay with the other terms I mentioned. You don't have any problem with hard-right politicians calling Obama a religious extremist and calling women who get abortions murderers and comparing the health care bill to the holocaust and all of the politicized emotionally-charged bullshit we see in the news every day.

    None of that bothers you at all, right? It's just the terms they've decided to use, so what's inflammatory about that? If you don't understand what Sean Hannity means by a "socialist culture" then clearly you're the one who's at fault. Once you've heard him give his definition of socialist I'm sure we can all have an honest exchange of ideas.

    It doesn't work that way. How you communicate is important, and the words you use will affect how people see your position. You shouldn't give people a pass on their bullshit just because you happen to agree with them this time.

    Squidget0 on
  • OrganichuOrganichu poops peesRegistered User, Moderator mod
    I taught self-defense courses for a while before and during university. They weren't expressly directed at women, but the class ended up being (via word of mouth, I guess) composed entirely of women. Through no probing of my own, it came out that a non-trivial number of the participants had been the victims of sexual assault- and others were taking the class largely to ballast their courage about the terrible possibility that it could happen to them, too. When I learned this at the conclusion of one of the classes, I was intensely uncomfortable. Two of my sisters have been raped, and it's not something that I'd fully processed (and that's probably still the case, today). I was and am overcome with fury, sympathy, protectiveness, respect for their strength, et cetera. I also knew the varying ways that people can respond to trauma like that. I was worried that I'd step in a minefield.

    Luckily, one of the participants was a friend of mine. I talked to her about it, and about my hesitation to bark aggressive commands or to put my hands on a woman who'd survived a sexual assault. She teasingly pointed out that maybe I should have considered beforehand that in a room with fifteen women, of course some would have experienced sexual assault. That was a sobering thought.

    Long story short, everything turned out pretty well. Everyone returned for multiple sessions. The entire time I was nervous that my advice would be seen as patronizing or imperative. I never alluded to sexual assault- but they gravitated that way. If paired up, the typical 'role play' they'd perform was obviously derivative of that fear (meaning, it was never 'give me your money!' or whatever). I don't really know whether I can extract useful information from that.

    But my personal takeaway is that if and when women- in a society that is oftentimes hostile, questioning, and accusatory towards them- are interested in taking steps to protect themselves such as they see fit, they'll seek it out. Failing that, I could maybe see a situation where an intimate friendship affords the opportunity to have that conversation. But broaching the topic boorishly and imperiously and as though it's an area of discussion that deserves public discussion seems incredibly insensitive.

  • spacekungfumanspacekungfuman Poor and minority-filled Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Kana wrote: »
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    Ideally we would never have war, we could travel space, and no one would be poor. Unfortunately we live in the real world.

    Herein we see a post which has completely missed the point.

    You don't blame the victim, if you do, you're a dick. All "what did she expect" does is let rapists off the hook. People like Liz Trotta who trot that chestnut out make me sick and they're a cancer on our national discourse. Because a woman wore a short skirt does not mean that rapists can be absolved. The woman is never at fault when she gets raped. Full fucking stop.

    Of course it doesn't make rape acceptable, but it also doesn't make it acceptable to be intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive.

    I feel like Heisenberg is performing some type of performance art to provide the perfect example of rape culture which he claims to be arguing against.

    Either that or he's being intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive.

    Why is finding rape horrible and having common sense mutually exclusive? People are bad and will do bad things given the opportunity. Don't give them the opportunity. Spacekungfu already said it: "walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem."

    Yes, but you should be encouraging smart behavior on its own right.

    You don't do it by saying "What was she expecting". Don't blame the victim.

    I'm actually explicitly not blaming the victim. What I am saying is we should not talk about how bad it is to say "she should not have gone to x dangerous place" so much that we make it sound like going to dangerous places is not bad.

  • _J__J_ Pedant Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    No, you don't get rid of a term just because people have difficulty understanding it.

    So I assume you're okay with the other terms I mentioned. You don't have any problem with hard-right politicians calling Obama a religious extremist and calling women who get abortions murderers and comparing the health care bill to the holocaust and all of the politicized emotionally-charged bullshit we see in the news every day.

    None of that bothers you at all, right? It's just the terms they've decided to use, so what's inflammatory about that? If you don't understand what Sean Hannity means by a "socialist culture" then clearly you're the one who's at fault. Once you've heard him give his definition of socialist I'm sure we can all have an honest exchange of ideas.

    It doesn't work that way. How you communicate is important, and the words you use will affect how people see your position. You shouldn't give people a pass on their bullshit just because you happen to agree with them this time.

    Your examples are terms that are beng used incorrectly, rather than terms that are difficult to understand.

  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Kana wrote: »
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    Ideally we would never have war, we could travel space, and no one would be poor. Unfortunately we live in the real world.

    Herein we see a post which has completely missed the point.

    You don't blame the victim, if you do, you're a dick. All "what did she expect" does is let rapists off the hook. People like Liz Trotta who trot that chestnut out make me sick and they're a cancer on our national discourse. Because a woman wore a short skirt does not mean that rapists can be absolved. The woman is never at fault when she gets raped. Full fucking stop.

    Of course it doesn't make rape acceptable, but it also doesn't make it acceptable to be intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive.

    I feel like Heisenberg is performing some type of performance art to provide the perfect example of rape culture which he claims to be arguing against.

    Either that or he's being intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive.

    Why is finding rape horrible and having common sense mutually exclusive? People are bad and will do bad things given the opportunity. Don't give them the opportunity. Spacekungfu already said it: "walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem."

    Yes, but you should be encouraging smart behavior on its own right.

    You don't do it by saying "What was she expecting". Don't blame the victim.

    I'm actually explicitly not blaming the victim. What I am saying is we should not talk about how bad it is to say "she should not have gone to x dangerous place" so much that we make it sound like going to dangerous places is not bad.

    I understand, I just don't think that the one necessarily means the other. Women are smart enough to figure out what's dangerous and what isn't. And, as others have pointed out, most rape happens from friends and family members.

    Lh96QHG.png
  • poshnialloposhniallo Registered User regular
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Sure, but can you see how that sort of inflammatory language would turn away someone who wasn't already aware of the issue of cultural misogyny?

    Yep. However, there isn't a more accurate or less inflammatory term for it.

    See, I've been reading your comments trying to figure out if you have a problem with the "rape" half or the "culture" half of "rape culture." Since "culture" isn't an inflammatory word, I have to presume that it's "rape."

    The chant in the OP is describing rape. it's not just describing misogyny, the lyrics explicitly wish that women were unable to fight back against unwanted intercourse. What it describes is exactly, completely, unequivocably rape.

    The concept of rape culture is that there are aspects of culture that facilitate or trivialize thanks, Arch! rape. Not kinda-sorta-metaphorical rape, but actual rape. That there are more women who are being forced against their will to have sex because the people doing it are particularly sensitive to cultural messages telling them that it's not that bad. That when women are forced against their will to have sex, they feel shamed and helpless because of cultural messages telling them that it wasn't that bad, or that they deserved it.

    What you are railing against is not inflammatory language. You are railing against the concept itself. You find the idea objectionable.

    Which is fine. You don't have to agree with me. Plenty of people disagree with me. But they actually come out and say it. 'I don't think that rape culture is a thing.' That's fine. You don't think it's a thing.

    But your premise that the term 'rape culture' is needlessly inflammatory rhetoric is a red herring. "Rape culture" is a precise, though short, descriptor for the concept we're talking about.

    I'm not sure we disagree on any particular points about the culture itself. I think that our culture is permissive towards misogyny and, in some situations, permissive towards rape. I think culturally we often view rape as something that happens to 'bad' people, and that some cultural norms in our society support this. I think we often react to rape of women by blaming them, react to rape of men by doubting them, and react to rape of criminals by ignoring them. This is the culture we live in. As near as I can tell, you and I don't disagree on any particular cultural point.

    I object to tying all of those things together into the phrase "rape culture" for the same reason I object to calling abortion 'infanticide', calling video games 'murder simulators', and calling reasonable discussions about how to allocate medical resources 'death panels.' In every case it's an inflammatory sound bite designed to silence people who disagree. I'm not even convinced that you need one phrase to tie all of those things together, because they're very different issues and I haven't ever seen anyone draw a common thread between them, beyond the fact that rape is involved. For example, I think the impulses that make us demand "justice" for criminals are probably different than the impulses that make people ignore male victims, and those cultural norms will be changed in different ways. Just high-end embezzlement on wall street is a different cultural issue than liquor-store robbery.

    The fact that so many people even in this thread have misunderstood the language you're using (and taken it to mean something far more inflammatory and extreme than it actually means) suggests to me that we should use a different term, if we must use one at all.

    The huge giant elephant of difference in the room is that rape is terrible and videogames, the right to abortion and medical treatment are not. So what you describe as 'inflammatory' terms are perhaps entirely appropriate.

    'Rape culture' is a new term which is at odds with widespread accepted behaviour in our culture. It will be misunderstood, just as 'feminism' is. It will remain contested until the time that it becomes useless due to the disappearance of the problem.

    I figure I could take a bear.
  • HeisenbergHeisenberg Registered User regular
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Kana wrote: »
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Heisenberg wrote: »
    Bethryn wrote: »
    I have a very hard time believing "she asked for it" is enshrined in our culture.

    The other two yeah, they're accepted.

    Nowadays, "she asked for it" is more likely expressed as, "what did she expect?" "sometimes you have to be more careful," or other claims that survivors need to be or should have been "more responsible". Anything that puts the onus of preventing rape on people other than rapists, or that suggests that people can control whether they are raped or not, is a part of rape culture.

    I worry when I see "what did she expect" called out like this. Obviously, victim blaming is really bad, but I also think it is important to keep in mind that, given the state of the world there are some things a woman probably should not do, like walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem.

    tumblr_lzfe2xptHL1qgz9tno2_250.gif

    Ideally we would live in a world where anyone can go anywhere they want.

    This is classic blame the victim thinking, SKFM, and it's a good example of how we all do it without even thinking. Drives the point home that constant vigilance is the price we pay for democracy and all that.

    Ideally we would never have war, we could travel space, and no one would be poor. Unfortunately we live in the real world.

    Herein we see a post which has completely missed the point.

    You don't blame the victim, if you do, you're a dick. All "what did she expect" does is let rapists off the hook. People like Liz Trotta who trot that chestnut out make me sick and they're a cancer on our national discourse. Because a woman wore a short skirt does not mean that rapists can be absolved. The woman is never at fault when she gets raped. Full fucking stop.

    Of course it doesn't make rape acceptable, but it also doesn't make it acceptable to be intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive.

    I feel like Heisenberg is performing some type of performance art to provide the perfect example of rape culture which he claims to be arguing against.

    Either that or he's being intentionally thick and mind numbingly naive.

    Why is finding rape horrible and having common sense mutually exclusive? People are bad and will do bad things given the opportunity. Don't give them the opportunity. Spacekungfu already said it: "walking into a biker bar alone in a short skirt. While her doing that does not in anyway excuse or mitigate the fact of the rape, I think we do want to enforce the norm that this behavior is a bad idea, just like it would be a bad idea for me to go walking around alone at night in a bad part of Harlem."

    Yes, but you should be encouraging smart behavior on its own right.

    You don't do it by saying "What was she expecting". Don't blame the victim.

    I'm actually explicitly not blaming the victim. What I am saying is we should not talk about how bad it is to say "she should not have gone to x dangerous place" so much that we make it sound like going to dangerous places is not bad.

    Exactly.

This discussion has been closed.